The more information Bungie reveals about Forge World, the more excited I am about it, which is strange considering my disapproval towards Halo 3's Forge. I guess I like it more form a technical perspective.

Was there anything specific about Halo 3's Forge that you had issues with?

They probably just paid a room full of people in India or China to report copyright claims on anything that said "Halo Reach gameplay." Outsourcing can have a downside, folks --- "They took our (okay, Cocop's) jobs"

But Luke promised we?d talk about raising the level cap soon and today we have the details. Hope you?re up for a challenge. In the very short term future a thermometer will appear on the Bungie.net front page charting the community?s collective progress towards completing, wait for it?

117 Million Daily & Weekly Challenges!

Don?t freak out. Currently, our online engineers project that you?re on pace to hit that milestone sometime in November. I?d wager to guess that you?ll hit it early in the month, but hey, what do I know?

Well, I do know that when you do cross the 117 Million mark, we?ll celebrate by blowing the lid off the level cap! In the immediate aftermath, new ranks and armor will be made magically available for you inside The Armory, provided you have the rank and credits required. Time to get to work!

Do the Daily and Weekly Challenges so that Drew McSniffles will stop crying.

I'm really impressed by the Matchmaking changes announced. Stop for a moment and have a think about the scale of changes being implemented for the new additions.

Firefight is being completely overhauled. We now have three very separate modes. The Limited playlist gives the purist fans what they want whilst the Arcade list gives folks plenty of assplosions. Each of these playlists have a good variety of modes to indulge in with more incoming in the near future. Score attack is being overhauled too, by resetting the leaderboards, it gives them a chance to gives us more single player content. No longer will busting Grunts heads be the only alternative to straight up solo Firefight.

If you are a Firefight fan, whether or solo or in a group, is this wintastic.

What I think is the most intriguing here is the slicing up of Invasion's core mechanics into new gametypes.

Firstly, they have taken one of the best mechanics of Invasion, Fireteams, and introduced those into regular Team Slayer modes. I have always loved bro-op spawning and I'm glad they have found a way to separate it from Invasion. Notice how they haven't also brought it into Objective gametypes? It's clear that bro spawning could easily break Objective gametypes (suddenly one guy near your Flag becomes an entire team!) so it's smart of them to exclude it.

Secondly, we can now have a Spartans versus Spartans or Elites versus Elites only Invasion slayer. That means no more strict advantage due to random initial species selection (unless you vote for it). By removing the timers and vehicles from the Invasion territories, they should now function similar to generic power weapon spawn locations that we're traditionally used to having around maps. Although I do hope this doesn't mean map power weapon spawns every other second or otherwise we're looking at a chunky salsa-fest.

I also hope this means that in future (please!!) that we can untangle score-progression loadout unlocks from Invasion. This is a pipe dream, but having this feature available for plain old Slayer and Objective matches would certainly lead to some interesting gameplay changes. (Imagine, relegating certain Armour Abilities to certain times during a game, like in the final few minutes or during a late game tie in objective, a proper game changer as it were!)

If this wasn't enough (and it is!) we have Multi-Team shaken up considerably, Objective modes added to SWAT and Grifball returning with extra maps. Oh and Community Slayer with ten, ten fricking new maps to play in. And as far as the community maps go, that's the tip of the iceberg.

With sweeping changes like this and the strong support of new content (from the community and future DLC), I am a happy Halo fan.

So with Bungie Day this year Bungie finally go dark once again and it marks the end of Bungie's Halo themed weekly updates. On the other hand, BS Angel has fired up the Halo Bulletin to continue the weekly dose of Halo information.
One thing that's been Missing In Action for a considerable amount of time is the cryptic teasing and codeword name dropping of the past. I can't recall any sort of significant tease of post-launch Reach content in any of the Weekly updates, but there's a long stretch ahead for the Halo bulletin to start that up.
Hope the Halo Bulletin fills the gap, it's had a good start.

So with Bungie Day this year Bungie finally go dark once again and it marks the end of Bungie's Halo themed weekly updates. On the other hand, BS Angel has fired up the Halo Bulletin to continue the weekly dose of Halo information.

One thing that's been Missing In Action for a considerable amount of time is the cryptic teasing and codeword name dropping of the past. I can't recall any sort of significant tease of post-launch Reach content in any of the Weekly updates, but there's a long stretch ahead for the Halo bulletin to start that up.

Hope the Halo Bulletin fills the gap, it's had a good start.

I thought the cryptic shit was the worst part of the weekly updates -- words with zero meaning or substance. It's like saying, "You guys are not gonna believe this..."

I thought the cryptic shit was the worst part of the weekly updates -- words with zero meaning or substance. It's like saying, "You guys are not gonna believe this..."

I was thinking more of the specific teases, like describing a battle happening in a certain corridor, describing the skyboxes or level geometry. Those kind of teases were had actual substance, enough to leave the speculation wide open without revealing anything. I remember the AJ article that pieced together various teases of DLC maps. The individual teases all added up to something fans could use and talk about.

Right now, we just get a sudden drop of information about everything. Look at the Noble and Defiant reveals. No substantial lead up at all (worse for Defiant since "hackers" had access to the maps early and ruined the surprise entirely!).

Plus the last 20+ Bungie updates have been 99% random pictures/screenshots (Bungie All Stars), playlist patch notes or news summaries from related events during the previous week. I didn't really see the point of them except to check what changes were coming up for Reach's matchmaking - and the majority of folks don't even care about that.